


i come back to the place you are

by ChancellorGriffin



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Best Friends, Domestic Fluff, F/M, Friends to Lovers, Outdoor Sex, Semi-Public Sex, Weddings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-10
Updated: 2019-06-11
Packaged: 2020-04-23 21:36:51
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 20,538
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19159459
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChancellorGriffin/pseuds/ChancellorGriffin
Summary: There's a lot more than just shitty hangovers at stake for Abby and Marcus, after they go wild on champagne and tequila the night before Jaha's wedding. A game of Truth or Dare, a drunk kiss, and a night spent in the same bed accidentally rip open decades-old wounds, and threaten to shatter thirty years of friendship completely.





	1. love, i get so lost sometimes

**Author's Note:**

> From the 2019 Kabby Kink Meme (link here - https://kabbykinkmeme.livejournal.com/1042.html?thread=151826#t151826 ).
> 
> ORIGINAL PROMPT: "modern au or canon: Marcus and Abby are friends who get extremely drunk one night and wake up in a bed together. What happens next?"

She opens her eyes, then immediately closes them again.

 _Screamingly_ bright sunshine pours in through a window whose shades aren’t drawn, stabbing into her retinas like a flaming knife, bouncing off a hideous yellow ceiling with bright green trim.  
  
_What the fuck?_  
  
Where is she? Why is this ceiling so ugly? Why does her head hurt? Why does _everything_ hurt?  
  
“Mrpmph,” comes a sleepy grunt from her elbow, as weight shifts on the mattress and soft hair brushes her skin, and for a moment she wonders how on earth she’s come to be in bed with a German Shepherd, before it all comes back to her.  
  
_“Shit,”_ she exclaims, sitting bolt upright, eyes wide open to suffer the horrible sunlight. “Shit, shit, shit.”  
  
“What? Huh? What?” Marcus grumbles, voice muffled by the pillow. “Who’s yelling?”  
  
“Wake up, dumbass. We’re late.”  
  
Marcus rolls over onto his back, opens one eye, furrows his brow in confusion. “Why is the ceiling so loud?”  
  
“I need you to be a little quicker on the uptake here, honey. It’s 10:45.”  
  
“No ‘cause the wedding’s at noon,” he mumbles, shaking his head and closing his eyes again. “So it’s not tomorrow yet.”  
  
On a different day she would find his befuddlement endearing - it’s always fun to fuck with Marcus, he takes everything so seriously, always one step behind the joke - but right now they do not have that kind of time.  
  
“Rehearsal dinner,” she reminds him briskly. “You. Charmaine. Tequila. She drank you under the table.”  
  
“I don’t like tequila, I decided.”  
  
“Well, I wish you’d decided that earlier. Seriously, buddy, I need you to stick with me here.” She snaps her fingers repeatedly in his face, to no avail, before finally smacking the top of his head.  
  
His eyes open.  
  
“Your breasts are nice,” he says drowsily, then closes his eyes again, and that’s when she realizes they’re both naked.  
  
_Shit. Shit. Shit._  
  
“Marcus,” she says, shaking him awake. “Marcus. I’m going to _kill_ you if you fall asleep on me. We have to be at the church in like half an hour. Where’s your suit?”  
  
“It’s in my room. Is this my room?” He blinks at the ceiling. “Whose bed are we in? Hey! Hey, how come we’re in a bed?”  
  
“Hi. Welcome. Now you’re catching up.”  
  
Marcus is awake now, struggling to sit up, staring blankly around him, shaking off sleep and what appears to be a _bitch_ of a hangover. Abby pulls the sheet up to cover herself, suddenly timid, though she’s not sure why. They’ve seen each other naked before, they’ve known each other for thirty years. They all went skinny-dipping on that high school beach trip. And Jake and Marcus did the Naked Beer Mile every year in college, she saw his dick flop around while he pounded PBR and ran laps around campus, and it wasn’t anything except hilarious. And he was there in the hospital when Clarke was born, he sat with Jake next to her bed and held his goddaughter while Abby, still high as a kite, let nurses mop up the blood from her vagina, and really, once you’ve crossed _that_ boundary in a friendship, how big a deal could some bare hotel room tits possibly be?  
  
It’s less the nudity, and more the question of _how the fuck they got here,_ which is currently throwing her sideways, and she can tell he’s baffled too.  
  
“Focus.” She snaps again. “Five-minute recap, and then we have to get up and get dressed. What’s the last thing you remember?”  
  
“Charmaine made me do tequila shots.”  
  
“Right. And then?”  
  
“And then, I woke up because you were yelling.”  
  
Abby sighs, scrubbing her hands over her face, memories hazily re-forming in her mind. “Okay. You got drunk with Charmaine, because you’re an idiot who thought you could go shot-for-shot with an ex-military sniper, even though you were a classics major -”  
  
“Hey.”  
  
“ - and Indra texted me to come back down to the bar and haul you to bed, because she didn’t know where your room was, and apparently you _also_ didn’t know where your room was -”  
  
“It’s on the twelfth floor.”  
  
“Great. I’ll go back in time and tell her that.”  
  
“Wait,” he said suddenly, shaking his head, haze clearing from his eyes. “Then how are we in _your_ room?”

“I don’t know,” she snaps, to hide her confusion, because actually, why _are_ they in her room? “I’m trying to remember.”  
  
“You weren’t doing shots with us.”  
  
“No, because I’m an adult.”  
  
But Marcus has shaken most of the fog off, and is beginning to recover, which means any semblance of moral high ground she might be standing on is fading fast.  
  
“You’re acting awfully judgy for someone who is just as naked as I am, and somehow got just as drunk,” he points out, which is exasperatingly true, and just as she’s about to fire off a retort she sees the empty magnum of champagne on the nightstand and _oh shit,_ there it is.

*** * * * ***

“Fuck, _you’re heavy,” she snaps at him, as he tilts sideways and knocks her off balance.  
  
“I can walk by myself.”  
  
“No, you can’t, you almost got your arm stuck in the elevator. If I let go of you you’re gonna crash right to the floor, and then I’m going to have to explain to Thelonious why his best man has a black eye.”  
  
“You could say you gave it to me.”  
  
“Or I could just give you one for real. Which I might if you throw up on my shoes.”  
  
“They’re nice.”  
  
“Thank you.”  
  
“They’re green.”  
  
“Great observation, Sherlock,” she sighs, which he finds hilarious. “Now where’s your room?”  
  
“It’s in the hall. With the carpets. By the thing.”  
  
“Where’s your room key? It should say on your room key.”  
  
“Pocket.”  
  
“Which one? Don’t make me just blindly grope around in your pants.”  
  
“Go for it,” he mutters, “it’s the most action I’ll be getting at this wedding.”  
  
“You and me both,” she says. “Holding down the fort at the singles’ table.”  
  
She feels around in his pockets, carefully and politely.  
  
No key.  
  
No wallet, either.  
  
“Marcus,” she says. “You _fucking _moron. Where the hell did you lose your wallet?”  
  
“Oh. I didn’t know it was gone. I just thought it was . . . not there.”  
  
“When did you see it last?”  
  
“I can’t_ see _it,” he explains patiently. “It’s in my_ pants.”  
  
_“Honey,” she says, gripping his shoulders, backing him against the wall, “you know I love you, but I am absolutely going to murder you if you don’t snap out of it.”  
  
“If you think about it,” he says defensively, “technically this is Charmaine’s fault.”  
  
“Well, that doesn’t do much for us right now, does it?”  
  
“Abby, I feel weird.”  
  
“Oh, for the love of God. Fine. You can sleep in my bed, and I’ll get them to send up a new key for you. And I’ll take yours. We can switch back tomorrow. And then we can find your wallet.”  
  
“You’re the best.”  
  
“I know.”  
  
“I don’t deserve you.”  
  
“Not right now, you sure don’t,” she says, as she hauls him down the corridor to her room and unlocks the door.  
  
She puts him in a cold shower, and then herself in a long, hot one, to rinse the bar's cigarette stink out of her hair, and by the time she emerges from the bathroom he’s kneeling by the fridge with a bottle of champagne in his hand.  
  
“Absolutely not,” she says firmly. “You’re going to die of alcohol poisoning.”  
  
“It’s for you,” he says brightly. “Catch up.”  
  
“It’s almost one a.m., Marcus, we have to be at the church at noon. We should just go to bed.”  
  
“Thelonious is paying for the room, which means he’s paying for the mini bar.”_

_She thinks about it.  
  
“Fine,” she says. “Grab all the candy too.”  
  
They make their way through several Hershey Bars, a bag of gummy bears, a tube of Pringles, and all the champagne. Marcus gets the idea to drop some gummy bears into the bottle, so the last one-third or so is vaguely fruit-flavored. They do the same five things they always do when they get drunk together: _

  1. _rehash favorite stories about everyone they hated in college;_
  2. _savagely roast each other's lifelong dating history (with the exception of Jake and Callie, who are of course off-limits);_
  3. _get into a violently heated argument about a book, this time Abby shouting that she’s not going to read an 800-page biography of Alexander Hamilton because she’s already seen the musical, and Marcus shouting that it’s not the same;_
  4. _sing the entirety of “We Didn’t Start the Fire”; and finally -  
_
  5. _make an attempt at Truth or Dare before realizing that they both always pick Truth and they’ve run out of things they don’t know about each other, so the game never goes anywhere._



_  
Except for this time, because Abby - for the first time in her life - picks Dare._

*** * * * ***

“Wait,” says Abby. "Is that why we’re naked? Did you _dare_ me?”  
  
“I think _you_ dared _me_.”  
  
“Jesus.” She buries her face in her hands.  
  
“Did we -”  
  
“Don’t even say it, Marcus.”  
  
“But if we did, we should probably -”  
  
“We didn’t.”  
  
“How do you know?”  
  
“Because we wouldn’t have. We’ve been friends since high school and we’ve never done it before, why would we do it last night?”  
  
“Because we were drunk and sad and at a wedding, and that’s what people do?”  
  
“We did not have sex, Marcus,” she insists, fumbling around on the floor for her clothes and attempting to pull them on without letting go of the sheet. “We did not fly to Palo Alto for Thelonious’ wedding and get drunk at the rehearsal dinner and have pathetic lonely hotel room sex, like we're in a terrible Katherine Heigl movie.”  
  
“How do you know?” he asks reasonably, and it’s suddenly infuriating to her that he’s so chill about it.  
  
“Because that’s not how it’s supposed to happen,” she snaps, tugging her shorts on over her hips and making her way to the bathroom to brush her teeth. Marcus stares at her, then grabs his underwear, pulls it on, and follows her in. “You need to go back to your room and get dressed,” she orders him, through a mouthful of minty foam.  
  
He doesn’t move, leaning in the doorway, rumpled and nearly naked and watching her with that maddeningly intense expression he gets when he’s thinking. “How was it supposed to happen?” he asks curiously.  
  
She spits into the sink. “What?”  
  
“You said, this wasn’t how it’s supposed to happen. You and me having drunk sex in a hotel room. How was it supposed to happen, then?”  
  
“That’s not what I meant.”  
  
“It’s what you said.”  
  
“I didn’t mean, that’s not how us having sex is supposed to happen. I meant that’s not what’s supposed to happen when you’re a goddamn adult in your forties at a wedding.”  
  
Marcus doesn’t say anything, just watches her. They’ve traveled together a lot over the years, he knows her morning beauty routine, the smells of all the lotions and toners are as familiar to him by now as his cologne and shampoo are to her. He watches her run a lemon-scented cleansing pad over her face; she washed her makeup off last night, but there isn’t time to take a shower again before the wedding.  
  
“What happens if we did have sex?”  
  
“We didn’t, Marcus.”  
  
“Okay, but if we did - is it just going to be weird and awkward forever between us, or what?”  
  
“We didn’t have sex. One of us would have remembered if we’d had sex.”  
  
“Maybe we’re both less memorable than we thought.”  
  
“This is the fucking _worst_ time for jokes, Marcus, I swear to God.”  
  
“I’m just asking -”  
  
“Honey, I love you, but you’re in the way,” she interrupts him curtly, pushing past him to plug in her curling iron. “We have to be dressed and in the lobby in like fifteen minutes.”  
  
Marcus looks at her like he’s about to say something, then changes his mind and leaves her alone.  
  
She relaxes, slightly, but it’s short-lived.  
  
“Hi, this is Marcus Kane, room 1204. Listen, I spent the night in room 1538, and I’ve misplaced my room key. There’s a black garment bag hanging on the bathroom door, and a black leather toiletry case on the counter. I’m going to need someone to run them up to 1538 as quickly as possible. Thank you so much.”  
  
“Thanks for telling the front desk we slept together,” Abby says frostily.  
  
“What did I say that wasn’t true?”  
  
“That’s not the point.”  
  
“Why are you being weird about this?”  
  
“I’m not being weird.”  
  
“The whole night was nothing but a series of opportunities for you to make fun of me, which is your favorite thing in the entire world. I can’t believe you’ve passed up the chance for this to be another crazy, Marcus-and-Abby story. Like the fish market in Hong Kong. Or when you won three thousand dollars in Vegas that one time because you let me blow on your dice. Or moving Clarke into her dorm and then getting high in the stairwell with that Jasper kid behind her back.”  
  
“This is different.”  
  
“I know,” he say patiently. “I’m just trying to figure out why.”  
  
_Because your dick was hard when you woke up next to me,_ she thinks but doesn’t say. _Because that’s new. Because I always fall like twelve percent in love with you when you wear a tuxedo anyway, and now I don’t know what’s going to happen.  
_

She tries to think of an answer that won’t make things worse, but can’t. It’s not unreasonable that he’s trying to figure out why she’s upset, but she can’t tell him, because even _she_ doesn’t really know why she’s upset, except that there was . . . something, some detail she can’t recollect, that changed things somehow, and it’s maddening not to remember.  
  
“I’m going to get dressed in here,” she says, which isn’t an answer; but he doesn’t protest as she closes the bathroom door on him.  
  
There isn’t time to do much with her hair, so she simply sweeps it into a loose chignon at the nape of her neck and curls a few of the tendrils around her face before unzipping the garment bag. It’s not as bad as she’d feared, thank God; the fitting had not been auspicious. Thelonious had wanted Abby on his side of the wedding party, proffering a stiff, dull column of black sateen, “so the wedding photos will look tidier.” But Abby has never been shy about picking a fight with him, and more often than not she gets her way. The dress shop, who had her measurements already, fitted her with one of the bridesmaid gowns, a draped jersey halter, scarlet with black piping. The back is cut scandalously low for a church wedding, but she feels almost glamorous with it on.  
  
She hears a knock - the concierge is here with Marcus’ suit - and she opens the bathroom door. “I’m dressed, if you want to come in and shave first. I’m just doing my makeup.”  
  
“Okay,” he says. “Thanks. You look really nice.”  
  
“Thanks.”  
  
“I’m glad you got one of the good dresses.”  
  
“Fucking Thelonious,” she mutters.  
  
“Fucking Thelonious,” he agrees, and she smiles, and it rights something between them, a disjointed piece clicking back into place.  
  
So it’s not bad anymore, but it’s still . . . different.  
  
Marcus helps her with the zipper she can’t reach, something he’s done a hundred times before, and suddenly he notices the perfect curve of her bare back, the delicate ridges of her spine. She’s not wearing a bra, which shouldn’t matter but suddenly does. Her skin is as smooth now as it was when she was seventeen.  
  
“I like your hair like that,” is all he can manage to say, as he unzips his traveling case and turns on the faucet. She stares straight ahead as she murmurs a polite “thank you,” though whether it’s to do with the mascara wand in her hand or something else entirely, he doesn’t know.  
  
Out of the corner of her eye, Abby watches Marcus shaving, for the thousandth time since they met, and can’t understand why it’s suddenly charged with electricity. The way droplets of water glide down the tendons of his throat to his bare chest. The graceful movements of his wrist as he foams the shaving soap with his old-fashioned boar-bristle brush, the deft flick of the straight razor, both of which she mocks as an affectation _(“What, so Gillette isn’t good enough for you?” “This is how real men shave, Abby.” “When did you turn into a Brooklyn hipster?” “Excuse me, but I’m not the one who spends two hundred dollars on a haircut”)._ The blade slices cleanly through the soft white foam, over and over, and when he finally towels off his face his beard is perfect. It always looks softer, just after he shaves, and she suddenly wants to reach over and touch it, but turns away to fumble through her makeup bag instead.  
  
Marcus returns to the bedroom, and by the time she’s finished applying her lipstick he’s buttoning his white shirt, bow tie loose around his neck.  
  
“Will you -”  
  
“In the car,” she says briskly, stepping into her black satin pumps. “We have to get down to the lobby.”  
  
_And if I’m going to tie your bow tie for you I need to do it in a limousine full of people, though I don't know why either._  
  
He opens the door and ushers her out. His hand on her bare back is warm, almost hot, and he pulls it away a little too quickly.  
  
Her heart sinks, a little.  
  
_It’s going to be like this forever, isn’t it? We’re never going to be able to go back._  
  
“We look good,” he says proudly, as they wait for the elevator.  
  
“We do,” she agrees, not sure why this makes her sad. “We look good."

They’re last to arrive in the lobby, but they’re not technically late. Abby feels self-conscious about her messy hair when she sees how polished the other women look. She knows they all went to the salon together this morning, because she’d received an awkward, last-minute pity invite a week ago and declined it. She doesn’t know any of the bridesmaids, they aren’t her friends, she only knows the groomsmen, and the notion of room service pajama breakfast with Marcus had sounded much more appealing. But now she sees the row of identically sleek french twists and feels rumpled, somehow, like she doesn’t fit in.

Thank God she doesn’t have to stand next to them. Maybe if she ties Marcus’ bow tie a little crooked, they’ll match.  
  
The limo is crowded, and they have to cram into one row of seats with Sinclair. Abby sits in the middle, peculiarly aware of how tightly she’s pressed into Marcus’ body, how close their faces are when she leans in to do his bow tie.  
  
“One of these days, you’re going to have to learn how to do this yourself,” she grumbles, feigning irritation to hide the odd feeling of imbalance she can’t seem to shake.  
  
“He doesn’t need to,” laughs Sinclair, from behind her. “He has you. When is he ever going to need a tux for something where you won’t be his date?”  
  
“I’m not his date,” says Abby, and “She’s not my date,” says Marcus, at the exact same time, and even without looking at him they can both feel Sinclair staring.

*** * * * ***

The wedding is . . . fine.  
  
It’s too long, and the reverend is tedious, but otherwise it passes largely without incident, which is only to be expected with a politician groom who never stops thinking about optics and overprepares for everything. But Thelonious looks very handsome, and Alie looks very beautiful, and even though neither of them are expressive people they both seem to be registering the correct human emotions in front of the photographer, and everyone seems to be having a very nice time.  
  
Except Abby.  
  
Maybe Thelonious was right that she should have worn black, she thinks, hyper-aware of how visible she is, how exposed, a loud red interruption in a tidy line of black tuxedos. She can’t stop thinking about how much of her back is showing, even though fortunately only Sinclair, standing behind her, can see it. It’s just a little bit too warm in the church, though the robot-perfect bridesmaids don’t appear to be feeling the least discomfort, but Abby feels self-conscious of every loose tendril of hair framing her face, and worries she already looks disheveled before the reception has even started.  
  
She should have worn black. She shouldn’t have fought Thelonious. It’s his wedding, after all. She could have given in, it wasn’t really that big a sacrifice, was it? A few hours in a stiff, plain dress which he’d picked because Abby is almost fifty and that’s the dress a woman like her should be wearing, it was stupid of her to resist it so violently. Stupid to be so emotional about it, just because it came from the mother-of-the-bride section of the store. Thelonious was being practical. Alie is younger than him, and so are her friends, and while a bevy of lissom California thirtysomethings can pull off a flaming red halter with a scandalously low back, the widowed mom of a college student probably can’t, and it was stupid that she cried then, and it’s stupid that she’s crying now, but now she can’t stop, tears stinging the corners of her eyes, and it's a relief that Marcus has his back to her. She watches him soberly hand Thelonious his ring, and she hates them both a little for how much easier this is for men. Marcus will never have to worry about this, a tuxedo is a tuxedo and every man on earth looks better in one, especially a man who's already this good-looking. Marcus will never know the humiliating discomfort of wearing the wrong dress and looking like you’re trying to compete with women decades younger than you, when you should have just given in to the inevitable and worn the matronly dress, and -  
  
_“Matronly.”_  
  
Wait.  
  
_Shit._  
  
There it is.  
  
_Oh no, oh no, oh no,_ she whispers to herself, biting her lip to keep her face from collapsing, as the word triggers the memory and all of last night comes flooding back to her.

*** * * * ***

_“Truth or Dare?”  
  
“Truth.”  
  
“Do you think I’m ever going to have this?” he asks seriously.  
  
Something in his voice sets off a tiny alarm bell inside her head, and she looks up at him suddenly, brow furrowed in concern. “Have what?”  
  
He sweeps a drunken arm through the air, just missing the bedside lamp. “This.”  
  
“My hotel room?”  
  
“No. _This.”  
  
_“Okay, babe, just, like, waving your arms bigger doesn’t help me.”  
  
Marcus sighs and flops down on his back on the bed. The soberest part of Abby’s mind is deeply annoyed at him for getting the stink of cigarette smoke on her sheets, after he inexplicably got dressed again post-shower in the suit he’d worn to the bar. She’s going to have to sleep on the other side of the bed, she thinks, the whole room-swapping plan and Marcus’ missing room key long since forgotten.  
  
“Use your words.”  
  
“I just meant . . . Thelonious is getting married, I’m the best man. You and Jake got married, I was the best man. Charles got married, I was the best man. Indra got married, I was the best man. Charmaine got married -”  
  
“Now, wait a second. Charmaine got married for like, thirty-six hours, when we were in Vegas for Charles’ poker tournament. And the guy turned out to be a felon.”  
  
“I know, I just -”  
  
“And Indra’s gay, so be _real _careful here acting like she’s had an easier time of it, Mr. Heterosexual Man Person.”  
  
“I’m just saying. It’s like . . . this thing everyone gets but me. I keep watching the rest of you do it, and I don’t get to have it myself.”  
  
“You’ll have it,” says Abby, kissing the tip of his nose. “I’ll be your best man, if you want.”  
  
“That would be very progressive of us.”  
  
“Charles can be your maid of honor.”  
  
“I think it’s matron, since he’s married.”  
  
“‘Matron’ is such a horrible word.”  
  
“It really is.”  
  
Abby flop down on her back beside him, with a sigh, and stares up at the ceiling. “Be glad you’re not a matron,” she says frankly. “I’m a matron. Matron means dried-up old lady that no one is going to have sex with again.”  
  
“Hey now. You don’t know that that’s true.”  
  
“Yes it is. I have it way worse than you. I’m a matron and I’m a widow. I lost the man I had, and I’m too old to snag a new one. You’re a guy. Everyone thinks older guys are sexy.”  
  
He waves this off. “Please.”  
  
“Every girl in that bar was checking you out when I came down to drag you away, Marcus. You could have had any one of them. Well, not Charmaine. But anyone else.”  
  
“Oh, you mean the terrifyingly loud bachelorette party in the corner? Thanks but no thanks.”  
  
“Come on now. They were very cute. And some of them were even kind of sober.”  
  
“Ha ha.”  
  
“You’re being way too maudlin. I hope this isn’t what your speech is gonna be about tomorrow. You can’t give a best man toast about how much you suddenly resent being everybody’s best man.”  
  
“I don’t resent it. I just feel . . ."  
  
“Feel what?”  
  
“Lonely,” he says, finally, and Abby rolls over to look at him. His face is so serious, and so sad, and her heart twists a little in her chest.  
  
“Hey,” she says firmly. “Hey. I’m right here. Platonic life partners, remember? We made a pact and everything.”  
  
“It’s not the same.”  
  
She pulls him into her arms and lets his head rest on her shoulder. “I know it’s not. I know.” She kisses his hair. “Sometimes I’m lonely too.”  
  
“I wonder if it’s worse,” he muses, voice muffled in her shoulder, “to have a big bed that’s never had anybody else in it for very long, or to have had it and lost it.”_  
  
“Jesus, _this is getting dark,” she says, pulling away and giving him a light smack on the head, uncomfortable with the direction the conversation is taking. “Anyway, it’s your turn now.”  
  
“Fine,” he says. “Truth or Dare?”  
  
And maybe it’s because she wants to stay as far away as possible from anything that might bring that sadness back into his voice, or maybe it’s because now she’s genuinely afraid of what he might ask her next, in this mood, so she does something she’s never done before.  
  
“Dare.”_

_Marcus stares at her, wide-eyed. “Wait, really?”_

_“Really.”_

 

 

_“You never pick Dare.”_

_“I like to fuck with your expectations.”_

_He furrows his brow, looking around the room, trying to come up with something, before his eyes light on the shrapnel from their minibar foray and he lights up. “Okay,” he announces. “You have to eat all the gummy bears out of the bottom of the champagne bottle.”_

_“Done.”_

_“In one mouthful.”_

_“Done.”_

_“Without barfing.”_

_“I would_ never,” _she says primly, “I am a_ lady.”  
_  
Then she upends the magnum over the glass she swiped from the hotel bathroom, and pounds the bottom like a stubborn ketchup bottle._

_“Ah, yes, very ladylike,” says Marcus, as a rainbow cascade of gummy bears, swollen to twice their original size from soaking in booze for so long, tumbles out into Abby’s cup. As promised, she gulps them down in one huge mouthful, then slams the glass down triumphantly on the nightstand. Marcus applauds with great enthusiasm._

_“Your turn,” she says. “Truth or Dare.”_

_“Truth.”_

_“You’re so predictable.”_

_“I hate dares. You know I hate dares.”_

_“Okay,” she says, struggling to come up with a question about Marcus that she doesn’t already know the answer to (When did he lose his virginity? After junior prom, with Callie. What is his favorite movie? If anyone else asks,_ Chinatown. _If Abby asks,_ Miss Congeniality. _What is his biggest fear? Falling. What is his_ stupidest _fear? Cats in groups, because “they always look like they’re plotting”)._

_“Oh, fine,” he sighs, relenting and taking pity on her. “Dare. Since I know you want to.”_

_She looks at him for a long moment, considering, before she decides._

_“Okay. Take off all your clothes.”_

_“Excuse me?”_

_“Your suit smells like a hotel bar. You’re making my nice clean sheets all stinky.”_

_“I don’t want to be naked when you’re still dressed.”_

_“I’m not dressed. I’m just in my pajamas.”_

_“Still. You would have me at a disadvantage.”_

_“If I take mine off, you’ll take yours off?”_

_Marcus nods soberly. “Pinky swear.”_

_“Fine,” she says, yanking her tank top off and shimmying out of her shorts as Marcus stands up from the bed to shed his rumpled, smoke-scented suit._

_They both politely don’t look until they’re safely ensconced beneath the clean white sheets._

“So _much better,” Abby says, pleased. “Now I just smell hotel shampoo. It’s nice. You’re all coconutty.”_

_“Yours is like, papaya. Combined, our hair is like a fruit salad.”_

_“You’re a fruit salad.”_

_“Thank you for shaving your legs, by the way.”_

_“I didn’t do it for you.”_

_“I know, but I still get to enjoy it. This would be much less comfortable if you were stubbly.”_

_“You better sleep on your other side, mister. I don’t want to feel your dick on me all night.”_

_“You keep your boobs to yourself then.”_

_“With pleasure.”_

_“Are you sleepy? We should sleep.”_

_“I’m a little sleepy. And I don’t want to feel gross in the morning. For this stupid wedding.”_

_“It_ is _a stupid wedding.”_

_“I don’t like Alie at all, do you? She’s so weird. Tech people are so weird. She just stares straight at you, like a robot.”_

_“And her company is real shady. The whole thing is so political.”_

_“Thelonious is such an asshole sometimes. Why are we friends with him?”_

_“I forget.”_

_“Me too.”_

_“He did introduce us, though. So we owe him that.”_

_“His one good deed,” Abby grins at him. “I’d be lost without you.” She leans down and presses a light kiss on his mouth._

_It’s just a soft little peck, they’ve done it a thousand times, but for a second - just for a second - she feels his lips shift beneath hers. Like he’s about to open them to her. Like it’s a real kiss._

_She recoils instantly._

_Marcus stares at Abby._

_Abby stares at Marcus._

_“Did something just happen?” she demands._

_“You felt it too?” he whispers._

_Heart pounding, she nods. “What do you think it was?”_

_“I don’t know. I thought maybe . . . an earthquake? But it might also be that we’re just super, super drunk.”_

_“Marcus, what are you talking about?”_

_“I was talking about the room spinning sideways," he answers, staring at her blankly. "What were_ you _talking about?”_

_“Nothing,” she says, a little more irritably than she means to, and he furrows his brow in sad, puzzled, intoxicated confusion. So she sighs, relents, leans over to kiss him goodnight again._

_This time she’s not imagining it._

_His mouth falls open beneath hers, one hand lifting to cradle her face, his lips smiling happily against hers, a soft, contented hum of pleasure vibrating inside the warm wetness of their mouths. His tongue stays put and behaves itself, but it’s still a very real kiss, long and sweet and intense, and when he pulls away, Abby feels like the Earth’s polarity has reversed and she no longer knows which way is up._

_“Don’t want you to be my best man,” he mumbles drowsily, closing his eyes and sinking heavily onto the pillows, and then in seconds he’s asleep._

_Abby stares down at him._

_“What the fuck just happened?” she whispers, reaching out to trace his soft bottom lip with her finger; but Marcus, snoring peacefully, doesn’t answer._

_She lies awake for a few minutes, staring stiffly up at the ceiling, leaving as much space as possible between his body and hers, before she succumbs to the inevitable, and lets herself move closer, curling up into his arms. He’s warm and soft and clean, and his dick is currently behaving itself, so being naked with him isn’t so bad. It’s nice, actually, to feel someone else's skin pressed against hers._

_She hasn’t done this in so long._

_She wasn’t sure she ever would again._

_And it’s only Marcus, it’s not like it means anything, but still._

_But still._

_She falls asleep with his breath warm on the back of her neck. It still smells like gummy bears._

*** * * * ***

Tears sting her eyes. Thank God she’s at a wedding, she can pretend she’s just sentimental, instead of mortified and confused and old and sad. She can’t see his face from her position behind him, only the coffee-colored sweep of his hair, perfectly tousled and just barely grazing the collar of his shirt. But she can’t even enjoy that, can’t even think how nice he looks, because the contrast of dark hair against white cotton only reminds her of the way he gazed up at her from that hotel room pillow with that sleepy smile on his face, as though all was right with the world, as though he hadn’t just kissed her mouth in a way he’d never kissed her mouth before and then immediately fallen asleep without explaining himself at all.

He doesn’t turn around until it’s time for communion, but his eyes miss nothing as he takes her hand and walks her down the steps from the altar.

“You’re crying,” he whispers.

“I’m okay.”

“You don’t cry at weddings.”

“I’m fine, Marcus. I’m just tired.”

He knows this is a lie, but he also knows they can’t get into it now, in the communion line, with the eyes of an entire cathedral full of the Silicon Valley elite on them, so he doesn’t push further. But as they resume their places on the altar behind Thelonious, Marcus squeezes her hand.

“Love you,” he mouths, smiling at her a little helplessly, like he knows it’s not enough to fix whatever’s wrong.

“Love you too,” she mouths back. Then he turns around, and all she can see is his back for the rest of the ceremony.


	2. when i want to run away

“When did she get . . . hot?”  
  
“Who, Abby?”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
Charmaine turns to look at him, eyebrow raised, and follows his gaze across the room, where Abby is laughing about something with Charles and Sinclair. She seems to be, if not _avoiding_ him precisely, at least determined not to be alone with him, which hurts in some new way he can’t explain; but at least she’s smiling, and the smile looks real. That inexplicable sadness he’d spotted in her eyes in the middle of the ceremony - twisting his heart into knots so intense that he almost missed his cue to exit with Alie’s maid of honor during the recessional - seems to have evaporated, so at least she’s having a good time. But something’s different.  
  
More than one thing, actually, as he’s just confessed to Charmaine. Because _fuck,_ he has no idea what’s happening, but he can’t stop looking at her. Her soft hair, her bare back, the swell of her breasts, the way the bold red fabric drapes across her hips and her ass . . .  
  
Jesus, what’s _wrong_ with him? Why is he thinking about Abby’s ass? He’s not even drunk, he’s had nothing all night but aspirin and soda water, he has no excuse.  
  
“When she hit puberty, I’m assuming,” says Charmaine dryly, through a mouthful of cheese. She’d demanded Marcus return to the appetizer station and reload her plate after dessert was served; Hope has a dairy sensitivity, and pricey imported Brie - like last night’s marathon of tequila shots - is an indulgence she's determined to take advantage of, now that she's finally done breastfeeding.  
  
“I’m serious,” Marcus insists, snagging an apple slice from her plate, his eyes never leaving the sinuous curve of Abby’s hips.  
  
“So am I. I mean, I didn’t know her then, but I’ve seen pictures.”  
  
“Never mind."  
  
Sinclair whispers something to Abby, and she throws back her head and laughs, and he finds himself suddenly . . . _jealous?_ Could that be?  
  
What is _happening_ to them?  
  
Charmaine throws a grape at him. It ricochets off the side of his head. “What’s gotten into you?”  
  
“Nothing.”  
  
“Okay. So, no more tequila shots. I mean ever. You’re clearly still drunk.” She reaches over and plucks his drink from his hand. “Lay off the gin and tonic.”  
  
“This is La Croix.”  
  
She sniffs it, glaring him suspiciously, then gives it a taste before realizing he’s telling the truth and handing it back. “Fine. Then why are you looking at Abby all weird?”  
  
“I’m not.”  
  
“Yes, you are.”  
  
“It’s just . . . I don’t know. She changed.”  
  
“No she didn't. She’s the same Abby she was yesterday, except in a red dress.” She takes another big bite of Brie and crackers. “Maybe you just like the red dress,” she suggests. _“Fuck,_ this cheese is good. Thelonious is a real prick, but at least he always feeds you.”  
  
“It’s not the dress,” Marcus insists. “She’s different.”  
  
“Maybe _you’re_ different.”  
  
“I might be,” he agrees absently, eyes still locked on Abby as Charles leads her out onto the dance floor.  
  
“You ever gonna do something about it?” Charmaine inquires casually.  
  
“About what?”  
  
“About the fact that I can tell from your face that you want to rip that red dress right off her.”  
  
_“Jesus!”_ he hisses, flushing with mortification. “Will you knock it off? People can hear you.”  
  
Charmaine shrugs. “Suit yourself.”  
  
“It’s not like that.”  
  
“Okay.”  
  
“I mean it.”  
  
“Okay.” And she drops it, returning to her food.  
  
He studies her for a long moment, all her attention focused on spreading Gorgonzola on her crostini without breaking it. Her bare feet are casually propped on a chair, heels long since discarded, and her hair is pulled back in a practical ponytail. She just got to be a guest today, she didn’t have to get to the church early or stand on the altar for the entire ceremony, she’s just relaxed and lovely and happily surrounded by unlimited whiskey and cheese, and he suddenly can’t be irritated anymore.  
  
He reaches across the table, and squeezes her hand.  
  
“What’s gotten into you?” she demands, eyeing him suspiciously.  
  
“Nothing. I just love you very much.”  
  
“Weddings always make you sentimental,” she says, rolling her eyes. “Go bug Abby. And send Charles over here, I know he’s got secret cigars and I want one.”  
  
“He’s busy. He’s dancing.”  
  
“Then cut in,” she says, rolling her eyes. “You know you want to.”

*** * * * ***

“Can I ask you a question?” Charles’ voice is low in her ear, with something worrying in it. “Why is Marcus staring at us like that?”  
  
Abby doesn’t have to look to know exactly what he’s talking about. She can feel his eyes on her from across the room. She’s been feeling them all night.  
  
They'd had mercifully few moments alone in the post-ceremony chaos, a source of great relief to her. The photos took hours, and then there was a pre-reception for VIP guests, where they’d been obligated to stand in a lengthy receiving line and shake hands with an endless parade of strangers. And then there was the actual reception, a formal dinner with the entire wedding party at one long table facing the crowd ("oh, like the Last Supper?" Marcus suggested when he saw the seating plan, but the groom was unamused). A massive explosion of long-stemmed red roses separated her from Marcus, and it was worth the overpowering floral scent permeating her food to have a bit of breathing room between herself and the sad, confused eyes of her best friend.  
  
His toast was perfect, which she knew because she helped him write it. (They’d holed up in the corner booth at their favorite bar with a pitcher of beer and a basket of Tater Tots and a fresh pack of index cards, and the night turned almost immediately into a game of Who Can Think of the Most Inappropriate Thing to Put Into This Best Man Toast?, which led to a game of What’s Your Least Favorite Thing About Thelonious?, by which point they’d used up all the index cards, so they’d ordered more beer and more Tater Tots and begun again.) He’d been poignant, and sincere, and had managed to come up with some genuinely lovely things to say about their curmudgeonly friend and his weird robotic wife, and everyone cried, and Thelonious and Alie performed the correct human facial responses, and Abby reached out behind the floral arrangement to squeeze his hand as he sat back down.  
  
But once the toasts were over, the cake cut, and the bride and groom's first dance completed, the formal portion of the evening came to an end, so there was nothing except her own ingenuity preventing her from being cornered by a worried Marcus to ask why she'd been crying. Which is why, like a coward, she’d attached herself to Charles and Sinclair like a red-gowned lamprey.  
  
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she lies smoothly to Charles, but he knows her too well to be fooled.  
  
“Something happen between you two last night?”  
  
“Of course not,” she snaps instantly. “Don’t be gross.”  
  
“I wasn’t asking if you fucked, Abs,” Charles says a little dryly. “I was asking if you had a fight.”  
  
Abby flushes as red as her dress. “Oh.”  
  
“Kinda illuminating that you went straight to sex, though.”  
  
“I didn’t. I thought that’s where _you_ went.”  
  
“Okay,” he shrugs.  
  
“Charles, I didn’t,” she insists again, weirdly defensive and not sure why. “I mean, for God’s sake, it’s _Marcus._ I’ve known him since I was fourteen. He’s Clarke’s godfather. He’s family. He’s been like a brother to us.”  
  
“No,” Charles corrects her gently. “He was like a brother to _Jake.”_  
  
“It’s the same thing.”  
  
“Is it?” he asks gently. “You sure?”  
  
And suddenly, miserably, she’s _not._  
  
Charles spins her around the dance floor in sympathetic silence, to the strains of “Unchained Melody,” but she doesn't even see him anymore.  
  
Has she been wrong this whole time? Is that even possible? Oh God, oh _fuck,_ and what does she do _now,_ since he's planted this thing in her head and she can’t un-know it, while that dumbass across the room is just sailing along, blind and cheerful and totally ignorant of the fact that he punched a hole in her heart with the stupid drunk kiss he doesn't even _remember,_ and the best thing in her life is now ruined, and -  
  
“Hi,” says Marcus, who has suddenly and startlingly replaced Charles in her arms, a switch which she was too distracted even to notice. “We need to talk.”

It happens so quickly there’s no chance to flee. Marcus wraps one arm around her waist, palm resting on her bare back, and then takes her other hand in his to press it against his heart as they slowly sway to the music.

Abby shakes her head. “We can’t do this right now,” she insists tightly. “People are staring.”

“I don’t care.”

“Well, I do,” she snaps. “I don’t want to burst into tears in the middle of the dance floor at Thelonious’ wedding in front of six hundred guests.”

“Fuck the wedding,” he replies evenly, earning him some very definite looks from the couples dancing nearest them. “Fuck the dance floor. Fuck the guests. All I care about is you.”

“Can you stop saying ‘fuck’ so loud?”

“Come upstairs with me, then. If you don’t want to talk here. Let's get out of these clothes and into some sweatpants and drink tea on the couch and just talk.”

But Abby can’t imagine anything more achingly miserable than being alone with Marcus right now while he’s trying to be kind - unless it's the notion of someone catching them slipping out of the party early to go upstairs, and having to endure raunchy, good-natured mockery about it tomorrow at brunch.

The bride and groom glide by, their movements smooth and mechanically perfect, and she feels her old friend’s eyes appraising her, so she feigns as bright a smile as she can muster.

“Thelonious is right behind you,” she murmurs to Marcus, carefully keeping her face composed. “Can you get us away? I don’t want him watching us right now.”

“Where?”

“My ten o’clock. Act normal. He’s looking right at us.”

Marcus is surprisingly graceful for someone so tall and broad-shouldered, and she’s always liked dancing with him (“the only time you ever let me lead,” he teases her constantly). He pulls her close, maneuvers them into a complicated and elegant turn, and when he’s finished they’ve moved deeper into the crush of bodies on the dance floor, and she’s pressed even tighter against his chest than she was before.

“Better?” he asks.

She nods. “Thank you. I just . . . I couldn’t stand being looked at anymore. I’ve been on display all day. It’s exhausting.”

He squeezes her hand in his, still holding it against his heart like something terrible will happen if he lets it go. “Why does it feel like something’s broken, between us?” he murmurs, eyes dark and somber on hers.

“Because it is,” she answers softly. “I don’t know if I can . . . go back.”

“Please don’t say that,” he whispers, and she can feel his heart hammering in his chest with something like panic. “Just tell me how to fix it. I’ll do anything, Abby. I would walk through fire for you. Whatever happened last night, just tell me and I’ll make it right.”

“You can’t, Marcus,” she says heavily, letting her head sink down onto his shoulder. “It’s not something you can undo.”

Then the music changes, and Marcus gives a hollow laugh as they hear, like some kind of cruel joke, the familiar baritone voice of Bill Withers.  
  
_“Ain't no sunshine when she's gone_  
_It's not warm when she's away . . .”_

“Well, this is a little on the nose,” says Marcus, with a trace of gallows humor, but Abby doesn’t answer, and it takes him a moment to realize she’s crying, as quietly and discreetly as she can, into the shoulder of his jacket. Instantly he stops moving and pulls back, cupping her jaw in his hands, standing stock-still in the center of the dance floor as joyful chaos swirls around them, staring down at his best friend in helpless horror as her small face crumples and the tears spill down her cheeks.

“People are staring,” she says again, but he doesn’t care. Nobody else exists in his entire world except this small woman in her scarlet dress with soft brown hair coming out of its loose knot and grazing the creamy white skin of her bare shoulders, and the fact that he knows he’s somehow the person who put this sad look on her face - and that _he can’t remember what the fuck he did_ \- is the closest thing to hell on earth he’s ever experienced.

“Let me fix it,” he implores her. “Please. Tell me what’s wrong.”

“I just . . . I can’t do this anymore, Marcus,” she says heavily, and from the way he flinches with his entire body like he’s been struck in the face, they both know she isn’t just talking about the dance.

“No,” he whispers desperately. “No. That sounded like a goodbye. This can’t be a goodbye. Goddammit, Abby, there can’t be anything so broken between us that it can’t be fixed. Not when we love each other this much.” And now there are tears in his eyes too. “I’m losing my best friend, and I don’t know _why,”_ he says, voice naked and raw, “and it’s killing me.”

She knows she can’t tell him. She can’t open that door, here, in front of all these people. She can’t say it out loud. But it’s _Marcus,_ and in her whole life she’s never once told him a lie, and she can’t start now, which means there’s nothing she can say that will satisfy him or get him to stop asking. “I just . . . I can’t be your best friend anymore, Marcus,” she finally says. “Not after last night. Everything’s different now. We can’t go back to the way things were.”

“Jesus, Abby, if it was that bad,” he whispers urgently, voice threaded with panic, “if I hurt you, if I did something you can’t forgive . . . listen, I know, I _know_ that being drunk isn’t an excuse, it’s _never_ an excuse, but you _know_ me. Nobody knows me the way you do. Have I ever, in thirty years, ever done anything like this before?” He caresses her cheek with his hand. “Sweetheart, it’s _me,”_ he implores her, “it’s you and me. I’m not the guy who goes out and gets wasted every weekend and does horrible shit to the people he loves. You must know, you have to know, Abby, if I did something that hurt you, I didn’t mean it.”

“No,” she says, in an empty voice, too weary even to resist as he puts his arm around her waist again and pulls her back into his arms. “I know, Marcus. I know you didn’t mean it.”

“I love you so much.”

“I know you do.”

And then there’s nothing but silence, and the voice of Bill Withers, for a long, long time.  
  
_“Ain't no sunshine when she's gone  
Only darkness every day . . .”_

And she’s so tired, suddenly, she doesn’t want to fight anymore, and it’s somehow easier like this when they aren’t looking at each other - his eyes gazing out into the swirling chaos of the ballroom, even though he sees none of it, and hers closed tightly against the sting of tears as her cheek rests against his - so she finally just says it.

“I’m sorry,” she whispers. “But it’s over. This is over.”

And she can’t stop the tears from coming, now, they stream down her face, and he’s holding her so close that he can feel them trail from her cheekbone over to his, warm drops trailing through his beard down to his jaw. One grazes the corner of his lip. He can taste her sorrow.

Everything slows down, like they’re moving underwater, like an impossible weight is holding his body down, but finally, she feels him surrender.

“If you have to walk away, I won’t stop you,” he murmurs into her ear. “I won’t fight you, if this is what you want. But Abby, if I did something that was so awful that I destroyed the best thing in my life, and I can’t even remember what it is . . . Please. It’s going to haunt me forever. I just have to know what went wrong.” He pulls back just enough to turn his head and meet her eyes, and she can’t tell her tears on his cheek from his own anymore, because now they’re both crying. “Please just tell me,” he whispers, as vulnerable as a child. “Tell me why you can’t be my friend.”

“Because you didn’t want me to be your best man,” she finally says, sobs choking her voice, and the minute the words are out of her mouth the whole world stops.

He recoils from her like her touch is poisonous, his eyes wide and horrified, a hand coming up to cover his mouth, and Abby watches the wheels spinning as every last piece of the puzzle finally clicks back into place, and Marcus remembers everything.

_“Fuck,”_ he whispers savagely. “Oh, God, Abby. I _kissed_ you.” He’s distraught, scrubbing his hands over his face, through his hair, restless, almost pacing, and now people are staring at them again. "Jesus. I’m an _asshole._ I’m such a fucking asshole. I got blackout drunk at a wedding and I made a pass at my best friend’s wife.”

Abby had not thought it was possible for her to feel worse, but hearing him phrase it like this lands in her chest like lead.

_“I made a pass at my best friend’s wife.”_

That’s all it was to him.

That's who _she_ is to him.

She thinks she’s going to be sick.

But she can’t be angry at Marcus, because he’s so miserable, self-loathing boiling through his entire body, and it feels like a particularly nasty joke from the universe that they’re this unhappy and totally unable to comfort each other.

“I broke us,” he whispers hoarsely. “I crossed a line. You were vulnerable, and I was so inappropriate, you have every right to be uncomfortable around me, there’s no excuse - oh God, and you remembered in the middle of the ceremony, didn’t you?” he realizes, the pieces all coming together. “That’s why you were crying. Fuck. _Fuck._ It was _me._ I’m the one that made you cry.” And of course, there’s nothing to say to this. “I know it doesn’t help,” he murmurs heavily, “but you can’t possibly hate me right now more than I do.”

“I don’t hate you,” she tells him. “I could never hate you.”

“You should,” he says hoarsely. “If I’m the one that ruined what we had, because I was drunk and stupid and couldn’t act like an adult - you’d have every right, Abby. Every right.”

It’s a long time before she finally speaks.

She keeps her tone entirely neutral. She can’t give anything away here. It’s so important, suddenly, that she know how he’ll answer without any indicators from her.

“All I need to know,” she says carefully, “is if you regret it. If you’re sorry that you kissed me.”

“Of _course_ I do,” he says earnestly, grabbing hold of the wrong end of the stick and clutching desperately at the way her words seem to offer the possibility of amends, of atonement, a chance to repair this so she’ll finally be able to look at him again, with no idea that he’s twisting the knife inside her heart even deeper. “Honey, of _course_ I do. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry. You have to know it will _never_ happen again. I’ll never take another drink for the rest of my life, if that’s what it takes for you to feel safe with me again. I mean it. I’ll do anything. I just . . . I can’t lose my best friend.”

A funny thing happens, inside Abby’s cracked-open chest, with every heartfelt word pouring out of the soft, warm lips she’ll never be able to look at the same way again. It’s like her sadness somehow exceeds her body’s maximum capacity. It expands and expands until it’s so vast that her heart can no longer hold it, and then it just . . . blinks out of existence, taking everything with it. She’s just a hollow shell of a body around a merciless black void. No pain, anymore. No sorrow. She feels absolutely nothing at all.

She wonders if she ever will again.

“Okay,” she says, distantly. “Thank you. That was very . . . clear.”

And he knows, somehow, that the broken thing is still broken, that his apology didn’t fix it, but he doesn’t know why, and she doesn’t say anything else, so they just keep dancing.

“I never got this song before,” he murmurs. “Not really.”

“Marcus, don’t.”

_“You’re_ what makes a house a home, Abby. Like the song says. The song is right.”

“This song isn’t about us, Marcus,” she tells him wearily. “That’s the whole fucking point. That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you.”

Then the music ends.

“I need to get some air,” she says quickly, pulling away and fleeing into the crowd, and within seconds, she’s gone.

He elbows through the crush of bodies, chasing the flash of crimson in the corner of his eye, only to shove his way into a sparser corner of the crowd and realize miserably that it's the wrong bridesmaid.

It's like a horrible trick. There didn't seem to be that many of them during the wedding, but now he hates every woman in red who isn't Abby, because he realizes now that he's definitely lost her.

_Fuck._

Sinclair is still over near the bar, and he thinks about it for a minute; but no, he can’t ask Sinclair where Abby is, because Sinclair knows Abby was just right there, with him, and he can’t explain why she ran away without making everything worse.

“Everything all right?” says Thelonious smoothly, gliding past with his bride in his arms. “You look rather adrift, Marcus.”

“I'm fine,” Marcus says shortly, and turns his back on them to get the hell out of here, long past caring how rude he looks.

But fate, and an overly enthusiastic DJ, are working against him, as a jovial “LET’S SEE EVERYBODY ON THE DANCE FLOOR!” blares from the speakers, followed by the opening notes of “Shout!”, and Marcus is swept back like a boat against the current as a horde of bodies stampede inward. Worse, the mellow ballroom lighting is abruptly replaced by instantaneous darkness, enlivened only by an insufferable revolving multicolored ceiling light over a disco ball.

Marcus feels dangerously close to a panic attack.

It begins to seem as though all six hundred wedding guests have decided to team up and obstruct his path with the worst dance moves possible. It's like shoving through a moving wall, arms and legs flailing at him from every direction, and under the lurid rainbow lights he can't tell what colors are real, so he doesn't even know which way he should be going.

When he finally emerges from the scrum, he's somehow on the opposite end of the building entirely. The vast, sweeping ballroom takes up the hotel's entire third floor, with the main entrance on the north end; he can see the head table where the bridal party had dinner, up on the dais, and it feels about six miles away. He's clear on the southwest side now, nothing around him except the farthest corner of the wrap-around terrace where three hours ago an army of bakers were staging all the cakes.

His pocket buzzes, and he pulls out his phone.

**behind you**

Stepping further away from the dance floor and closer to the wall, he can see Charmaine, an ocean of empty dining tables away, still sitting with her feet up on the same chair, Charles now seated beside her. She gives him a jaunty little wave, then points back behind him to the glass terrace door.

**_thank you_ **

**don’t fuck it up**

**_Thelonious is gonna kill you both for smoking cigars inside_ **

**that’s our problem, not yours**

**we’re not scared of Thelonious**

**hey check this out**

As he looks up from his phone and spots her again, she tilts up her chin and exhales a flawless smoke ring, clear enough to be seen across the room. Charles, beside her, applauds vigorously. Charmaine gives an elegant little bow, then looks back at Marcus and shoos him back toward the door.

So he goes.

He won't intrude for long, he thinks, as he slips behind the empty catering carts in front of the door and steps out into the darkness, leaving the chaos of color and light behind him. Just to make sure she’s okay before he goes. Home, maybe. That might be best. Maybe the front desk has found his wallet. Maybe he can just pay for his room, pack his bag, and slip out quietly. No big scene, no more tears. Let her have some space.

_You’re such an asshole, Marcus. It took you thirty years to build that friendship and one night to destroy it._

The veranda wraps around the entire building, but the outdoor bar and the fireworks and the fountains are on the north side. Out here, once the door closes behind him, the babble of voices vanishes, and even “Shout!” is blissfully semi-muffled. Down below, in the parking lot, there are a handful of staff still milling around and cleaning up the catering tents, but other than that, it’s so empty that at first he thinks Charmaine was wrong and there’s nobody here.

Then, deep in the shadows, a light breeze picks up a flutter of red skirt.

The low, wide marble wall of the veranda ends here, meeting the stone exterior of the hotel, and what appears to be a massive circuit box controlling all the outdoor lighting has been half-assedly concealed by some large ornamental shrubbery, creating a near-perfect hiding place. Abby is seated on the white marble, knees drawn up to her chin, nothing but a dark head resting on a scarlet triangle of skirt. He can’t see her face in the shadows.

“Charmaine ratted me out, huh?” she says flatly. "I thought she might." She doesn’t look up at him as he approaches, but she also doesn’t seem surprised.

“I won’t bother you long,” he says carefully. “I just wanted to let you know that I’m leaving. I’m headed upstairs to pack, I thought if I could get your key, I could grab my stuff from your room and then it would be out of your way. Then you don’t have to worry about getting them back to me, if you don’t -”

_. . . if you don’t want to see me again._

But the sentence is too horrible to finish, so he doesn’t.

“In my purse. I left it on the table next to my plate. Just leave it at the front desk when you’re done.”

He sees her run her hands up and down her arms suddenly, faintly shivering, and instinct leads him to remove his jacket and drape it over her shoulders without thinking twice.

“Don’t,” she says dully, though she doesn’t take it off or resist. “You need it, you said you were going to go pack.”

“I don’t care about the jacket, Abby.”

“I’ll have Sinclair bring it back to you.”

“Fine.”

“You still have a few things at my house, I’ll box them up and send them back with him too. Your loaf pans and your whiskey and some books.”

Marcus reels like she's just punched him in the stomach.

The whiskey is a tradition.

Abby doesn't like it, and neither did Jake, but it was always Marcus' drink. So everywhere the Griffins ever lived, they kept a bottle of whiskey reserved for his visits. When they were college kids, it was Jim Beam or Jack Daniels, which was all they could afford. Then they grew up and got jobs and Marcus' palate improved and it was Bulleit or Makers Mark, respectable adult libations to be drunk neat from Abby's best glassware while three best friends read in front of a roaring fire.

The tradition didn't stop after Jake died. Abby still keeps a bottle of whiskey for him - just as he maintains a section of his wine rack, off-limits to anyone else, with the full-bodied French and Italian reds she likes best.

The current bottle - the one she's returning to him, only half-gone - is a bourbon called Jefferson’s Ocean, which is aged at sea aboard a ship that spends six months traversing the globe. It was part of his birthday gift, an inside joke since Marcus gets seasick. She'd drawn a stick figure of a pirate inside the card, with a beard that looked suspiciously like his.

Abby has never not kept a bottle of whiskey for him. If she's returning it, that means he's no longer welcome in her home.

Marcus has lost so many people in his life - his parents, Callie, Jake - but he realizes now that this, this cold, empty parting, might finally turn out to be the one loss he doesn't come back from.

“It smells like you,” she says, rising abruptly and shrugging out of his jacket, turning to face him for the first time and shoving it miserably back at him. “I can’t. It’s too much. I can’t.”

He starts to answer her, but then they suddenly hear a sound which causes them both to freeze, silently sharing the exact same thought:

_Oh, fuck you, Charmaine._

The muffled cacophony of Shout!”, which was followed by “Celebration,” has been replaced by the lilting intro of a song they both know so well that from the very first notes, they are transported back in time.

It's the song of high school mix tapes and karaoke nights with Callie, the song of road trips to the beach in Charles' dad's old van and dorm room dance parties, the song from their favorite scene of the first movie they saw together, the song they loved to scream-sing at the top of their lungs any time it came on the radio while Jake was driving, because Jake did not like it at all. Privately, they both thing of it as "their" song, even though of course that's silly because that's only for couples and they aren't a couple, it's just that they're two best friends with the same favorite song and every time they hear it they think of each other.

Marcus takes a step towards her and holds out his hand. "Dance with me," he says. "Our last-ever dance should be this song. If this is ending, let's end it right. If you're giving the whiskey back, if I'm never going to see you again - let's just pretend, for the next three minutes, like we're still us. I'll leave as soon as it's over."

She hesitates, biting her lip uncertainly; but when he moves closer, placing his hand back on her waist and pulling her against his chest, she doesn't resist, and as she leans her head against his shoulder he can hear her faintly murmuring the words of the song.

_“When I want to run away, I drive off in my car,  
But whichever way I go, I come back to the place you are . . .”_

“Abby,” he begins. “I just want you to know -”

“Marcus, if you tell me one more time how much you regret that you made a pass at your best friend’s wife, I’m going to throw myself off this balcony,” she says sharply, and somewhere in the farthest recesses of the machinery of his mind, he feels a small _click,_ like she’s handed him a key - though he doesn't know to what. “Since apparently, that’s all I am to you.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean he’s been dead for seven years, and you still see me as half a couple instead of a whole person. I'm not a woman, I'm a wife."

“You’ll always be Jake’s wife,” he says. “You always have been. And before you were Jake’s wife, you were Jake’s fiancee. And before that you were Jake’s girlfriend. And before that, you were the girl Jake was trying to work up the nerve to ask out, and I had to help him figure out how to do it. So there was never a chance for me to -”

And then he stops.

Wait.

_What?_

And then the key clicks in the lock, and the door opens, and a maelstrom of emotions sweep across his face, and suddenly everything becomes clear, he knows it all, he can see it all, the whole past thirty years of his life, everything illuminated in shining glorious color, the world finally spinning the right direction.

“Fuck it,” he announces. “I lied. I don’t regret it at all.”

Abby looks up at him, her brow furrowed, something in her eyes that’s impossible to read.

“When I woke up this morning, I felt . . . I felt _happy,_ Abby,” he tells her, heart racing, something like excitement pulsing in his voice, a long-buried truth finally bursting out into the light. “I felt _right._ I’d fallen asleep with a smile on my face and I’d dreamed happy things all night long and when I woke up, even though I didn’t remember the kiss, I knew I was happy. For that one moment - before reality came crashing back in, before my head hurt, before we were late for the wedding, before everything got complicated - before all of that, there was just this feeling that everything in the world was good and right and it had something to do with you being there next to me. I just didn’t know what it was.”

She’s staring at him, eyes still bright with tears, body tense in his arms like a startled wild animal, like she’s . . . _afraid_ of him, suddenly. Like she doesn’t want to hear what he’s trying to say.

But hell, it’s already over, isn’t it? She said so herself. If he's going to break it, he might as well break it with the truth.

“I didn’t know, before," he tells her, "it wasn’t something I was keeping from you. I just never let myself think it. And by the time I woke up, it was buried again.”

“Marcus -”

“And you knew it too,” he cuts her off fiercely, “you knew it all along, the same way I did, you just didn’t _know_ that you knew. And I suppose it wouldn’t have mattered anyway, not back then. But you’ve _always_ known, Abby,” he murmurs, pulling her body even closer, his palm hot and urgent on her bare back beneath the drape of his jacket. “You were right. You knew what it meant. I _don’t_ want you to be my best man, Abby. Ask me why.”

“Stop it.”

She struggles, a little, trying to pull away, but he holds her fast, gripping her hand in his own against his heart. “Then I’ll just tell you,” he whispers. “Because I don’t want you standing behind me on the altar, watching me say my vows to somebody else. I want you standing across from me, with your hands in mine. Abby, it’s _always_ been you.”

She closes her eyes, tears streaming down her cheeks, and he squeezes her hand tightly in his, counting down the seconds until the song ends and he has to leave her behind. “It's okay that you don't feel the same,” he whispers. “But maybe it was time I said it anyway.”

He smiles down at her sadly, brushing a strand of hair out of her face.

_“In your eyes, I see the doorway_  
_To a thousand churches_  
 _In your eyes, the resolution_  
 _Of all the fruitless searches . . .”_

He mouths the words along with Peter Gabriel and they're suddenly the truest thing anyone has ever said.

Maybe it's the song that makes him brave, as he slowly, slowly lets his thumb trace the soft bottom lip that he only got to kiss once in his life.

The wedding has lasted almost eleven fucking hours at this point and her makeup has long since faded; there’s just the faintest stain of red lipstick, still, but she’s lost the impeccable polish she was expected to perform for the cameras. That Abby will live forever in Thelonious Jaha’s meticulously-curated wedding photo album, but this Abby is all his – draped in his much-too-big jacket, hair coming loose from its knot, nothing left of her mascara but shadows.  
  
Then her lips move beneath his fingertip, and his heart stops beating.  
  
He looks down at her.  
  
She looks up at him.  
  
“Oh,” he whispers, swallowing hard.

“I don’t want this to be goodbye either, you son of a bitch,” she says fiercely. “I don’t want to give you back your whiskey. I don’t want this to be our last dance. I don’t want you to look at me and see Jake Griffin’s wife. I don’t want you to regret that you kissed me. And I don’t want to be your best man.” Her hand on his shoulder slides up, into his hair, pulling his head down to hers. “I want to not be your best man for the rest of my life,” she whispers breathlessly. “I want to not be your best man in sickness and in health, til death do us part. I want to not be your best man so badly that it’s been killing me, all day, to look at you and to know you didn’t remember. That the kiss didn’t mean to you what it meant to me.” She pulls her hand out of his and presses it flat against his heart as he closes his eyes, tears finally spilling over. “I fell asleep with my head right here,” she whispers. “Your heartbeat was my heartbeat, all night. Maybe it always has been.”

“We’ve been misunderstanding each other and getting everything backwards all day,” he murmurs in a low voice, “so I think I’m going to need you just to say it.”

“I’m in love with you, Marcus,” she says. “I just didn’t know until you kissed me.”

“Then I’d better kiss you again,” he murmurs, heart leaping with incandescent joy, “just to make sure you’re sure.”

“Not until you say it back.”

“You’re the love of my life,” he says simply, and then her arms are around his neck and his mouth finds hers and the whole world finally makes sense.


	3. the resolution of all the fruitless searches

Marcus presses his lips to hers, long and sweet and slow. The song ends before the kiss does, and despite the intoxicating feeling of her lips against his, the way his whole body is alive with sensation, the emotion that hits him first is just _relief._

 _Thank God,_ he keeps thinking. _Oh, thank God. Thank God._

Nothing is broken. It’s the opposite of broken. It’s a new and even more perfect, magnificent thing.  
  
“Oh, Marcus,” Abby says warmly, caressing his beard with gentle fingertips as they finally pull away to breathe, smiling up at him with a kind of soft, intimate fondness he’s never seen in her eyes before. “You are so beautiful. And you are so, so stupid.”

“Hey now.”

“Marcus, if you’d made a drunk pass at me when I didn’t want you to, and that was all it was, I would just have dumped a glass of water on your head,” she informs him sensibly.

“That’s true.”

“You should have known that wasn’t why I was mad at you. I was mad because you kissed me and you made me realize I was in love with you _and then you fell asleep and forgot about it.”_

Marcus looks down at her, and a blush sweeps over his cheeks. “Okay,” he concedes, in some mortification. “I admit it sounds pretty bad when you put it like that.”

Abby folds her arms across her chest, glaring up at him, a flicker of stubborn mischief in her brown eyes. “So you can imagine,” she adds pointedly, “how little I enjoyed hearing you apologize over and over for the kiss, and promising you’d never do it again, like _that_ was your principal infraction.”

“I’m an idiot.”

“Yes, you are,” she says frankly, “but we never would have figured any of this out if you hadn’t gotten so fucked up on tequila that you forgot to be platonic, so I forgive you.”

“You’re a very generous person.”

“I really am.”

He gives her another kiss, soft and sweet, but when he pulls away there’s something new in her eyes.

“You’re still kissing me like I’m someone else’s wife, Marcus,” she tells him gently, stroking his face with her fingertips. “I want you to kiss me like you don’t have to hold anything back anymore. Like you don’t have to stay on the right side of a line.” He swallows hard. “Kiss me like there’s no friendship at stake,” she whispers. “Like you don’t have to be a good man. Like you’re allowed to want me.”

“Abby,” he stammers, heart pounding.

“You’re allowed to want me,” she says again, something urgent and enticing pulsing in her throaty voice. “I want you, Marcus, I want you so much.”

And the moment the words are out of her mouth, everything’s different.

He’s done such a thorough job of pressing these feelings down for thirty years that he’s convinced himself he doesn’t think of Abby Griffin as a sexual being. As a desirable woman. Of course she’s beautiful, he admires her very much, but sex has never entered into it. And he's managed it so successfully that even after kissing her last night, he could lay down in a bed with his naked body against her naked body and feel only peace and warmth, feelings locked up so tightly that the whole time he was awake and conscious, his dick didn’t respond to her at all.

But now everything’s different.

_“You’re allowed to want me.”_

And my God, he does.

When his mouth crashes against hers, rough and desperate, she exhales in delirious relief, fingers tangling in his hair. He stumbles backward to find the low marble wall, and sits down to pull her into his lap, his whole body fizzing with wild, giddy joy, like his blood is carbonated, as her tongue sweeps fiercely into his mouth, and he can taste how badly she wants him back.

“Better?” he asks, as she finally pulls away from him breathlessly.

“Much,” she laughs, an impish grin lighting up her face. “I can’t believe how fast you turned this day around.”

“I take full responsibility for its very bad beginning.”

“Then you get to take full responsibility for making it up to me,” she informs him cheerfully, and then . . .

“Jesus,” he chokes out, as her hand finds his zipper. “Right _now?”_

“Did you have any better plans? Because this wedding sucks.”

“God, it really does,” he agrees. “The only thing good about it is you in that dress.”

She looks down, blushing, and withdraws her hand, suddenly vulnerable and a little uncertain. “I’ve been feeling weird about the dress all day,” she confesses. “I felt pretty when it was just us, in the hotel room, but as soon as I was standing up there, on that altar, on display, all those girls practically Clarke’s age wearing the same thing . . . I don’t know. It felt like the dress was too young for me. Too, I don’t know. Flashy. Trying too hard. Kind of pathetic. I kept thinking I should have just given in, and gone with the one Thelonious picked.”

If Thelonious walked out onto the veranda right now, Marcus thinks, he would be hard-pressed not to strangle him at his own wedding, for planting these doubts in her mind.

“I promise,” he tells her sincerely, his hand over his heart, “I would still want to fuck you even in that shitty black dress.”

This earns him a smack on the head, but at least now she’s smiling again. “Listen to me,” he continues firmly, cupping her jaw in his hand and forcing her to meet his eyes. “I don’t care what you wear. I’d be in love with you in a burlap sack. Or a Minions Halloween costume. Or Lady Gaga’s meat dress.”

“Very funny.”

“But you deserve to feel beautiful in this dress,” he whispers. “Jesus Christ, Abby, every time I see you my heart stops. That dress has been fucking me up all day. Even Charmaine could see it. To hell with the other bridesmaids. You’re the most beautiful woman here. You’re the most beautiful woman anywhere.”

“Are you just saying that to get me into your pants faster?”

“Obviously. But it also has the benefit of being true.” She bursts out laughing at this, her real laugh, unforced and open and joyful, and presses a fierce, warm kiss against his mouth. “But I’m also saying it,” he adds as he pulls away, “because there really ain’t no sunshine when you’re gone. And you really are the resolution to all the fruitless searches.”

“Stop trying to seduce me with copyright infringement,” she says tartly, to mask the fact that there are tears in her eyes again, so he wraps his arms around her back and pulls her close and for a long, long moment he just holds her, listening to the muffled sounds of Bruno Mars singing from what feels like a hundred miles away.

“I can’t believe this is actually happening to us,” she murmurs, voice low and full of some peculiar emotion that’s somehow both awestruck wonder and self-aware amusement at the same time.

“I can’t believe we have to be grateful Thelonious invited us to this stupid wedding.”

“I can’t believe we have to be grateful Charmaine can hold her tequila better than you.”

“I can’t believe Charmaine played our goddamn song.”

“I can’t believe how narrowly we dodged having our first real kiss to Kool and the Gang.”

“I can’t believe I had your naked body all to myself last night and I didn’t even touch you once.”

“Well, that’s not your fault, you didn’t know then.”

“Still. I feel like Past Marcus let us down.”

“Well, now Future Marcus has a chance to make up for it,” she says wryly, finding his zipper again and gently tugging it down, making him gasp. His hands slide up her hips, lifting her skirt to drape securely over both sides of his lap and opening up her center to him. As one hand slips beneath the fabric, up to her thigh, he flinches like he’s touched a live wire.

Where he’d expected fabric - cotton at the very least, if not an inconvenient pair of those high-waisted Spanx she wears under fitted dresses - he finds nothing except damp hair and soft skin.

___“Fuck.”_ _ _

“Draped cotton jersey,” she reminds him, laughing. “Panty lines. Photographs.”

“No, I know.”

“I didn’t do it for you.”

“Well, not on _purpose,_ but I definitely appreciate it.”

“If I’d had any idea,” she says wryly, “when I was getting dressed this morning and decided not to wear underwear with this dress, that twelve hours later it would serve the benefit of getting you inside me faster -”

The casual, comfortable way she says it makes his whole face light up, his chest aching with a gratitude so powerful he doesn’t even know what to call it. She makes it sound so _real._ Like she’s already his. Like it’s so natural and inevitable that she’s going to unzip his tuxedo slacks and fuck him right here on the veranda that they can make jokes about it.

“We’re still us,” he whispers joyfully, and she beams at him as she reaches into his cotton boxer briefs and takes his cock in her hand.

“We’re still us,” she agrees, giving him a soft squeeze and laughing at his stunned, raw groan. “We’re more us than we’ve ever been.”

Her hand on his cock is persistent, gliding up and down the shaft like she somehow already knows exactly how he likes to be touched, and it occurs to him that maybe she does. Thirty years. He and Jake talked about everything. Abby and Callie talked about everything. When they were drunk or high, _everyone_ talked about everything. He knows things about Abby, too, after all, he realizes, as he ducks his head to the hollow of her shoulder and presses a kiss onto the spot that he knows makes her whole body shudder.

He learned this through observation. He never imagined doing it himself. He never thought he even _wanted_ to. But as she shivers in his arms, hips grinding harder against him almost reflexively, like she can't help it, it's impossible to believe he was ever that fucking stupid.

“Oh God,” she gasps, “do that again.”

“Are you sure we shouldn’t go upstairs for this?”

“We will. Later. But I can’t wait that long.”

In all his life, nobody has ever wanted Marcus Kane so badly that they can’t wait to get to an actual bed. In all his life, nobody has ever straddled him on a veranda wall and fisted his hair and implored him to fuck her, _right now._

“Aren’t you afraid we’ll get caught?”

“No one’s going to see anything dirty, with my skirt draped like this. Besides, the caterers aren’t going to care. And all the action’s happening on the other side of the building, it’s not like Thelonious is going to wander out here to pose for photos overlooking the parking lot.”

“Can you not say his name when you have my dick in your hand?” he complains. “It’s kind of a buzzkill.”

“You’re such a fucking child,” she says, laughing, and then she lifts her hips off his lap and lowers them again and suddenly . . . he’s inside her.

“Oh my God,” he whispers, eyes wide and stunned as he feels her sink down onto his cock, and “Oh my God,” she whispers back as she feels him fill her, and all they can do is stare at each other in overwhelmed silence for a long, long time until their bodies finally settle and she’s taken him in all the way.

Abby cradles his face in her hands, breathing hard, loose tendrils of hair tumbling about her face, so close that their foreheads are nearly touching. For a long moment she just holds him there, buried inside her, as they get used to each other, until their hands stop trembling.

Then her hips begin to roll on his, and the cry he lets out is _explosive._

“Oh, _fuck,_ Abby . . .”

“Careful,” she murmurs, laughing, “they could switch back to a slow song at any moment and then they’ll be able to hear you all the way inside.”

He wraps his arms around her waist and kisses her throat again, savoring her shaky little gasps of pleasure at the scritch of his beard. “Jesus,” he groans into her skin, “you’re so tight . . .”

“Thank you. I’ve been working out,” she says primly, and even though he doesn’t look up she can feel his shoulders shaking with amusement.

“If you make me laugh, I’m not going to be able to do this properly."

“Sure you will. I believe in you.”

He reaches behind her neck and finds the hook-and-eye clasp of her halter, and unfastens the red cotton straps so they fall free in his hand, baring her breasts to him. “Please,” she begs him, clutching his hair and arching her back as she rocks her hips against his, pulling him down greedily until he obeys her silent command and nuzzles rough and urgent into the hollow between her breasts. “It’s like you already know my body, somehow,” she whispers. "Like you already know exactly what I want.”

“I do,” he murmurs as he returns his kisses to the hollow where her throat joins her shoulder, and she gasps like she’s been burned. “I know that once, you came just from being kissed here,” he whispers, “and that it makes you wet like nothing else does. I know this,” he goes on, rubbing a gentle circle around her pebbled aureola, “is the most sensitive part of your breast. I know that you like to be eaten out from behind when you’re lying on your stomach. I know that you hate being tied up, but you loved tying up Jake. I know you like to be on top. I know your personal record was twelve orgasms in one night.” He kisses the magic spot on her throat again, and her whole body convulses. “Thirty years,” he breathes. “I’ve been paying attention.”

Abby gives a low, throaty chuckle, her breath hot and sweet against his skin. “I know a thing or two about you, too,” she whispers, caressing his thick dark hair. “I remember when we played Spin the Bottle in your parents’ basement after homecoming and you got a hard-on when I kissed Charmaine. And I know you liked Callie’s vibrator collection as much as Callie did. Especially that white and gold one -”

“Oh, fuck, Abby . . .”

“Which I bought her.”

The moan that tumbles out of Marcus' lips at this is unholy.

“And I know about the girl you met in Amsterdam while you were backpacking. The one you told Jake gave you the best blowjob of all time. I can do that tongue thing now too, by the way,” she adds, nibbling lightly at his earlobe. His cock twitches _hard,_ buried deep inside her, and she laughs at the shattered look on his face, knowing he’s picturing it - Abby on her knees, grinning up at him, dipping her little pink tongue into his slit, prodding drops of precum out of him . . .

“And I know Callie never liked it as rough as you wanted in bed,” she continues, something bold and alluring in her voice. “I think no one you've dated ever has. Otherwise you’d have stayed with them longer. I think you always knew something was never quite right, every time, but you didn't want it to be _that_ because you didn't want to be that kind of man."

Marcus freezes, and stares at her. Never, not once, has this occurred to him.

"I don’t think you’ve ever really, truly gotten what you wanted in bed, Marcus,” she murmurs, eyes dark and fierce on his. “I think you're starving for the kind of screaming, pounding, hair-pulling sex that leaves bruises and breaks headboards, and I think because you’re a big man with a big cock, no woman you’ve ever fucked has felt safe enough to tell you it’s okay to let go." She strokes his cheek fondly. "You're always so scared to let go."

Marcus feels dizzy, like she’s sliced him open from the crown of his head to the soles of his feet and pulled his flayed skin open. Like she’s gazing directly at his brain and can read every single desire encoded there, like she’s just stepped straight inside him and shone a light in his darkest corner. He stares at her with wide, dazed eyes, totally unable to respond to this. She smiles at him with infinite fondness, then nibbles a sharp, biting little kiss into his neck as her hips snap into his, causing him to let out a raw, animal cry.

“Thelonious is paying for our rooms anyway, which I assume includes any fee for damages,” she reminds him impishly, “and it’s been a very, very long time since anyone’s pulled my hair.”

“Fuck, Abby, you’re killing me.”

"I feel safe with you, Marcus," she whispers, taking his face in her hands and looking straight into his eyes. "I'm not afraid you'll hurt me. I want it that way. I _love_ it that way. I want all of you. You never have to hold yourself back with me." She presses a hot, fierce kiss on his mouth, then pulls away and smiles at him playfully. “So, if your old-man back can take it, I would be honored to break a headboard with you tonight.”

“Now, wait a minute,” he protests. “You had me until you made a joke about my back.”

“Who injures themselves playing _golf?”_

“I’m not having this argument with you again!”

“For the hundredth time, you need to see a chiropractor.”

“Really? Now? We’re going to do this _now?_ In the middle of sex? Is this what it’s going to be like being married to you?”

“You’ve basically been married to me for thirty years, Marcus, it’s just that now you get to see me naked.”

“Which I am quite looking forward to, since I didn’t get a good look this morning.”

“Because you’re a gentleman.”

“Because I’m a gentleman,” he agrees. “Or, I _was.”_ Then he fists her hair with one hand and jerks her head roughly down to crash her lips against his, while his other hand slides down between their bodies to find her clit.

Abby gives a soft little cry of startled pleasure, muffled by his kiss. “I like you when you’re not being a gentleman,” she pants breathlessly when he finally releases her. “I like this new side of you. You’ve always been so . . . so _careful,_ with me. You make me feel safe, taken care of. It’s why I love you so much. But _fuck,_ it turns me on when you’re rough with me.” She grips the pleated front of his crisp white shirt in both hands and pulls him toward her. “Make me come on you,” she demands breathlessly. “Kiss me again, like that. Keep touching me while you fuck me. I want to come on your cock. I want you to feel how you make me feel.”

“I like this new side of _you_ , too,” he whispers, grabbing her by the hair again to yank her back to him, plunging his tongue hard and deep into her mouth like he’s fucking her there too, his thumb urgent as it circles her clit. He lets his hips thrust upward, meeting her body with his own, and the wave begins to crest so quickly he can tell, from the way her eyes widen and she pulls away from his kiss, staring in wild astonishment, that she wasn’t expecting it yet. _“Oh!”_ she exclaims breathlessly as he watches a storm of pleasure sweep over her, turning her cheeks and her throat and even her soft pale breasts a deep rose-pink. “Oh my God, Marcus. Marcus, I’m coming.”

“I can feel it,” he groans, closing his eyes and leaning his forehead against hers. “I can feel you, I can feel _everything,_ my God, Abby, you’re so -”

Her arms slide around his back, pulling him against her, and he reads her desire before she even speaks it, licking hot and hard into that spot in the hollow of her throat, letting his beard rough her silky skin as her shaky breaths deepen into low, wild cries. He nearly swoons with lust at the sensation of her cunt, warm and wet and pulsing, as it clenches desperately against his cock, and suddenly he's so overcome that somehow it’s _Abby_ that’s soothing _him_ as she finally comes undone, cradling him to her breast, stroking his back with impossible affection, moaning, “yes, baby, just like that, don’t stop, don’t stop” into his thick soft hair until with one long, bone-deep shudder she cries out and then dissolves against him.

Her hips slow and still against his, the muscles of her delectably tight cunt still quivering against his iron-hard cock, but for a long moment, as her orgasm subsides, she just holds him, wrapped tightly in her arms, and when she finally lets him go he sees tears in her eyes.

“Abby,” he whispers helplessly, heart sinking as he tries to retrace his steps and figure out what went wrong, but she laughs a little, shaking her head as she dashes the tears away.

“I can see the wheels turning,” she tells him, giving him a playful little smack on the head. _“Stop_ it. They’re happy tears, I promise this time. I promise.” She seems to be gathering the courage for something, so he simply waits, head tilted to the side, eyes thoughtful and patient on hers, and finally she bites her lip as she looks away. “It’s just . . . I haven't, since - there’s been nobody in seven years,” she whispers uncertainly, like she’s afraid to bring that reality into this moment, and Marcus’ heart snaps in half.

“Oh God, baby,” he murmurs, pulling her back to him and crushing her against his chest in a fierce embrace. “I didn’t even think, _Jesus,_ I'm so sorry, Abby, I should have -”

“It was _everything,”_ she whispers fiercely into his ear, “it was everything I could ever have wanted, it was _perfect,_ you’re _perfect,_ you brought me back to life, I haven't felt like this in _years,_ I thought I'd never feel like this again, so don’t you _dare_ start apologizing or I’m going to murder you for real.”

“I just . . . I didn’t put it together,” he confesses. “I knew you hadn’t dated anyone since, not really, but somehow I just . . . I wanted you so much, I didn't think through that piece of it. What it all _meant."_

“It all feels so right,” she tells him earnestly, cradling his jaw in both hands, pressing a soft kiss on his forehead. ‘It’s so right that it was you. After all this time. If I'd met some man on the internet, or said yes to one of Sinclair's endless, well-meaning blind date setups, and it had been _him_ instead - some stranger, someone who didn't know Jake, didn't love Jake . . . I think I would have woken up the next morning and felt like I'd lost him all over again." She kisses his mouth. "It had to be you, I know that now," she says simply. "It just always had to be. You and Jake. The only two men I've ever been with. The only two men I’ve ever loved. I spent the first half of my life with one, and I’ll spend the last half of my life with the other.”

A long silence follows her words, before Marcus finally breaks it.

“Well, fuck you,” he says irritably, yanking the hitherto-useless silk pocket square out of the tuxedo jacket lying discarded beside them on the bench. “Now _I’m_ crying.”

She smiles at this, eyes warm and bright with affection, as she runs her fingers through his hair before gently plucking the pocket handkerchief from his hand as he brings it up to wipe his eyes. “We don’t need this,” she murmurs, “let me,” and suddenly he can feel her soft lips on his skin, kissing her way up the side of his face, letting her little tongue trace a parabola above his cheekbone to take his tears into her mouth. Marcus’ heart stops beating in his chest. Even with his cock inside her, even after feeling the walls of her cunt clench around him in orgasm, even with her wetness spilling out of her and trailing down his shaft to pool on his hot skin - still, feeling her kiss the very tears from his eyes is the most intimate thing he has ever experienced with another human being in all of his life.

She moves to the other side and repeats the motion, and he doesn’t know how she _does_ this, make his cock twitch _and_ dismantle his entire heart at the exact same time, but with every passing moment it feels more unfathomable to him that there was ever a time he believed she was only his friend.

“Let me,” she repeats gently, sweeping both her thumbs delicately against his black eyelashes and collecting the tears still hanging there, as well as the new ones her tender ministrations have drawn forth, and even though he can’t see it he can _hear_ it, the sound of her taking first one thumb and then the other between her lips, licking those tears into her mouth as well.

“I meant it,” she murmurs, hips resuming their slow, deep roll, pulling him close to her chest. “I’m yours until the day I die. That’s what this is now. You and me, all the way to the end of the line.” She kisses his hair. “But we don’t have to dwell on that right now, since I acknowledge it’s sort of a buzzkill.”

Marcus opens his eyes at this, a retort forming on his lips, when he sees, off in the distance, the dreaded sight of a pair of caterers approaching the veranda doors with round black trays, clearly doing a last sweep for abandoned plates and glassware.

_“Fuck,”_ he mutters, adjusting her skirts to make sure everything is hidden, seizing his tuxedo jacket and draping it over Abby’s shoulders to hide her bare breasts. "Fuck, Abby -"

“What are you doing?”

“Kiss me,” he commands in a low whisper, “someone’s coming.”

“Why are you talking about yourself in the third person?”

“What?”

“And I’m not cold.”

“Abby -”

“Or is it that you’ll come harder if I’m wearing your jacket? Is it like an ego thing, or a women-in-menswear kink, or -”

“There are two caterers coming toward us, _you absolute lunatic,_ and I assumed you wouldn’t want them to see your naked tits or to know that my dick is currently inside of you, so can you shut up and hold still for _two seconds?”_

“Oh, so you mean don’t do _this,”_ she says mischievously, rolling her hips, making his cock throb violently. Her movements are so imperceptible that, from the other side of the potted greenery, in the darkness, there’s no way either of the caterers would catch them; but they do serve as remarkably effective punishment for Marcus calling her names, her only real intention in the first place.

The caterers barely cast a glance over to the corner - clearly they're far from the first lovebirds who have claimed this spot - and the too-big jacket draped over Abby’s naked shoulders, combined with her sweeping draped skirt, means that from the back, nothing is visible except that she’s sitting on his lap and holding his face in her hands, as though they’re kissing.

But they’re not kissing.

“That’ll teach you to call me a lunatic,” she whispers, her mouth hovering just a hairsbreadth from his own, rocking her hips against his with tiny, infinitesimal movements, clenching the muscles of her cunt to squeeze him tighter, and grinning wickedly at him as he fights desperately for control.

“Don’t you fucking _dare_ make me come in front of two underpaid event staffers,” he hisses, “they are just doing their job and they do not deserve to have to overhear a random stranger having an orgasm.”

“Better make sure they don’t overhear, then,” she whispers back. “You’ll have to be very, very quiet.”

“Dammit, Abby -”

But the rest of the sentence is lost. He inhales sharply, struggling to press his groans back down, as her hand slips down to where their bodies are joined, neatly concealed by the broad black rectangle of his jacket. As she wriggles her hips down to seat herself completely, his cock now buried in her up to the hilt, she begins to stroke the aching, heavy balls now pressed snugly up against the mound of her cunt.

“Shhh, baby,” she whispers, pressing her lips lightly to his to muffle his choked cry. “Don’t traumatize the nice hotel employees.”

“I’m gonna kill you.”

“But I’m being so nice.”

_“Fuck,”_ he groans, eyes fluttering closed as her cunt and fingers taunt him closer and closer to the edge. “Oh my God.”

“Don’t close your eyes, you have to watch over my shoulder and tell me when they’re gone.”

“Still here,” he says miserably as she subtly raises and lowers her hips, letting him slide just a little bit in and out of her, taunting him with friction.

“Too bad. Wonder how much longer you can hold out.”

“I’d be able to last longer if you kept your hands to yourself,” he complains, hissing sharply as she gives his balls another gentle press.

“That presumes my motivation is to draw this out as long as possible.”

“When really, your motivation is to be an absolute demon, just because I called you a name.”

“Hey, remember how you kissed me and then forgot about it?”

“Hey, remember how I just gave you a really nice orgasm and you’re refusing to return the favor?”

“Hey, remember how you kissed me and then forgot about it?”

“How can I be this in love with you and also hate you this much at the same time?”

“It’s a gift,” she shrugs, eyes sparkling with wicked merriment as she leans down to give him a slow, lazy, tortuously erotic kiss, tongue dancing against his, licking hot and hungry into his mouth, nibbling at his plush lower lip until he’s so discombobulated he can feel his head starting to swim, cock so close to bursting it _hurts._

But fate smiles upon him, finally, and the two caterers finish their circuit without so much as a backward glance at the couple before disappearing back through the glass doors.

The moment they’re gone, Marcus seizes Abby’s waist with both hands to hold her in place, and the merry laughter in her eyes turns into something deep and wild and inviting, a hot dark _yes_ that pleads with him to do everything to her body that he never thought he could. And then his hips buck against hers, over and over, and they’re off and running, and it becomes something else, something new, it becomes a frantic, gasping, desperate fuck they’re not even bothering to disguise anymore. Abby fists his hair and yanks his head forward to take her nipple back into his mouth; he suckles her so fiercely she can feel the delicious sting of his sharp teeth. Marcus thrusts up, up, up into the hot wet paradise of her cunt, and she pushes back, riding him with such urgent desperation that he knows she’s close again too.

“I love fucking you so much,” she breathes into his dark hair, still holding him against her breast and shivering as his tongue circles her areola over and over again, and the simple, blunt way she says it sends electricity rocketing through him, and in the end, it’s that as much as anything else that pushes him over the edge.

“Abby,” he groans, and she lifts his head from her breast to kiss his mouth. “Abby, I’m –“  
  
“Come inside me,” she orders him fiercely, cupping his jaw in her hands, “let me see, let me watch you, look at me, I want to see it in your eyes . . .”  
  
“Abby,” he says again, “fuck, oh _fuck,_ Abby, _Abby_ . . .” and then his whole body convulses so violently she has to grip his shoulders in both hands to keep him from losing his balance on the bench.  
  
“That’s it,” she murmurs, smiling at the dazed, desperate look on his face as she grinds down hard against his thighs, clenching the muscles of her cunt to milk every last drop of him. “Give me all of you, Marcus. I can take everything. I can hold all of you.”

He grunts and shivers as he pours himself into her, over and over and over and over, and she exhales in blissful contentment, heart swelling at the sensation of being filled to the brim, after being empty for so long.

Marcus has never come like this in all his life.

It lasts for so long that he sort of . . . leaves his body for a minute, the material world around him disappearing, replaced by disjointed scraps and fragments of thirty years’ worth of memories.

*** * * * ***

_A weekend beach trip in college where a very drunk Jake attempts to demonstrate to Marcus and Callie that he's figured out how to make Abby come just by kissing her neck. She squeals and giggles and drunkenly elbows at him, but once Jake’s mouth is on her skin, she goes soft and shivery and her noisy protests turn into breathy, quiet little sighs. Marcus and Callie squirm uncomfortably on the other sofa as they realize that Jake was not bluffing, that they are, actually, about to watch their friend come right in front of them, out here in the living room with all her clothes on, and only the beach house phone ringing halts them before she gets there (though it does not prevent Marcus and Callie, later that night, from returning to their bedroom and having the best sex of their young lives)._

*** * * * ***

_Decades worth of double dates after Callie's death, Jake with his arm around Abby and Marcus sitting beside a revolving door of perfectly nice women that Abby always fails to approve of, for reasons she never quite makes clear. She's unfailingly friendly to their faces and never unkind behind their backs, but there's always some vague something about each one that Abby claims will never work. The men empathize with her resistance to seeing Callie replaced, the only motivation either of them can see for why no woman is ever quite good enough for Marcus, because really, there's nothing else it could possibly be.  
_

*** * * * ***

_An opulent hotel room in Boston, where the best man was given the bedroom next to the bride and groom, and finally has to stomp irritably down to the lobby gift shop at 2 am for earplugs in order to get to sleep, because eavesdropping on Jake and Abby’s wedding night upsets him in some deep, primal way he doesn't understand. He joins in the good-natured ribaldry at brunch the next morning (Jake slapping him jovially on the back, "sorry man, the wife's a noisy one, hope the walls weren't too thin," making Abby giggle like a teenager) but he's relieved beyond measure when it's time to go home. That night he lies awake in his silent apartment and thinks about Jake and Abby on their honeymoon, probably having more loud sex in Hawaii at this very moment, and wonders why he can only_ think _happiness for them and not_ feel _it, something which fills him with shame.  
_

*** * * * ***

_Abby clutching at his arm from morning to night the entire day of Jake’s funeral, from the moment he arrives to drive her and Clarke to the church until they've hauled the last carload of floral arrangements back out to the cemetery. It gets so bad, at the reception, as she's bombarded with well-wishers and struggling to keep it together, that every time_ _he steps away to so much as bring her a glass of water or go to the men's room, when he returns she_ _seizes his hand again like she's drowning and someone's just thrown her a life raft. Like if he lets go of her again, she'll shatter completely.  
_

*** * * * ***

_Abby at Homecoming, wearing a fluffy waterfall of sky-blue taffeta, alone on the dance floor as “In Your Eyes” comes on the speaker while Jake is outside smoking pot with the rest of the baseball team. She spots Marcus, standing awkwardly by the punch bowl, all the way across the gymnasium floor, and holds out her hands to him, pleading. "It's our song," she says playfully, like it's their own private joke, as he places a pair of shaking hands on her silk-clad waist. He's careful to hold himself at a stiff distance, just in case Jake returns early, so he'll know nothing is happening here, so he'll know Marcus feels nothing. "Please," he'll say later to Charmaine, with a weary eyeroll, when she teases him about it. "She's practically my sister."_

  
*** * * * ***

_Abby last night, cross-legged atop the comforter with her hair wet, knocking back a mouthful of alcoholic gummy bears. Abby rescuing him from the bar, taking a rotten night of loneliness and tequila and turning it into perfect contentment, just by being herself. Making him laugh, forcing him to take a cold shower, throwing gummy bears through the air for him to catch with his mouth. Abby lying beside him, warm and naked and smelling like papaya shampoo, leaning over to kiss him goodnight, and suddenly changing everything. Abby’s tiny astonished gasp as his mouth moves against hers, that instinctive flinch to pull away, before her lips part to let him in as she finally kisses him back, and his whole world clicks into place, the meaning of life finally revealed to him, before he falls back asleep and forgets about everything and accidentally breaks her heart.  
_

*** * * * ***

A whole lifetime, leading to this moment, as she cradles his body against her bare breasts, hair coming undone, shoulders trembling, gasping his name while he comes inside her so hard that she comes again with him, cunt pulsing desperately against his now-sated cock. “Abby,” he whispers, and “Marcus,” she whispers back, and thirty years of things unsaid echo in those two simple words.

When they finally return to themselves, neither one of them can speak for a long time.

“Marcus,” Abby finally says, in her Practical Mom Voice, as she shifts her weight to let his cock slide out of her and tucks it back into his shorts.

“Oh no. I can feel you about to ruin this. Don’t ruin it.”

“I’m just saying, we have to figure out an escape route that doesn’t involve cutting back through a ballroom full of hundreds of tech bros and every single one of our extremely observant friends.”

“I don’t give a damn about the tech bros.”

“Do you give a damn about getting interrogated by Charmaine at brunch tomorrow because she saw me slinking back to the elevator with my hair a mess and hickeys all over my entire upper body?”

“Charmaine saw you leave, and she saw me leave, and she’s probably still in that same chair, with her feet up, smoking cigars and sending Charles back to the buffet on cheese runs, watching the door to see when we come back. The fact that we haven’t yet means I'm guessing she already knows.” He gently lifts the red jersey straps of her halter gown to refasten them behind her neck, then pulls one loose bobby pin from her hair and uses it to tuck a few stray locks back into her chignon. “There,” he says. “Keep my jacket on like you were just cold, and no one will see the hickeys.”

“Or the beard burn.”

“Or the beard burn.”

“What about you?” she says skeptically, eyeing his undone tie and rumpled shirt.

“I’ll just walk fast. If we stick close to the wall and go the long way, instead of cutting through the dance floor, we should be able to make it through unscathed.”

“Okay, but quick pit stop at the buffet table, because I’m starving again. If Charmaine hasn’t polished off all the cheese let’s grab some.”

“Worked up an appetite, did you?” Marcus says innocently as he helps her down from his lap and stands to zip his pants and tuck his shirt back in. “Jesus, my ass was freezing. I didn’t realize until I stood up.”

He holds out his arm to her, now that they’re, well, as tidied-up as either of them are going to get, but Abby suddenly hesitates, and he watches her scan the veranda desperately for any other exit.

“Marcus, I _can’t,”_ she whispers, an embarrassed flush sweeping over her face. “I’m all covered in - and I’m not wearing any -”

_“Fuck,”_ he groans, and even though his cock is completely spent, he feels it twitch between his thighs at the thought of Abby walking back through the wedding reception to get to the elevators, her naked cunt and thighs sticky with their cum.

“Don’t you _dare_ get turned on by that,” she says sternly, “this is a _problem.”_

“Huge problem,” he agrees. “Couldn’t agree more. Not hot at all.”

“You are an absolute child.”

“Abby, no one’s going to notice. We’ll just walk fast and pretend we don’t see anyone.”

“God, what if Thelonious stops us, what if someone _sees,_ what if we’re standing there talking to his _mother_ , or the _priest,_ and all I can feel running down my thighs is . . .” She shudders, but Marcus can see from the glow in her eyes that it’s just as much arousal as it is embarrassment.

“Well, then,” he says, seating her back down on the marble bench, “I guess there’s only one solution to our problem.”

“What?”

“We need to get you cleaned up."

“Marcus, what are you doing?" she whispers, looking around frantically, as he throws caution to the wind and disappears beneath her skirt. No attempt at camouflage, not even using the potted foliage as cover. Just kneeling between her thighs, submerged in a flutter of red jersey, as he pushes her knees apart as far as they’ll go and begins to bathe her sticky, sweat-sheened thighs with his lips and tongue.

Abby gives a long, deep, shivery moan as he begins to painstakingly lick her clean, her cunt already pulsing again at the warmth of his breath on her skin and the way he’s so comfortable with the taste of his own cum that she knows he must have done this before, which turns her on in some new and unexpected way. Jake was significantly more squeamish about tasting himself on her, but Marcus seems perfectly happy to lap up all of it, and by the time she’s been thoroughly cleaned all the way up to the tops of her thighs she’s shaking so badly she has to grip the side of the bench for balance.

She’s desperately torn, as he slowly kisses his way up the inside of her thighs to the downy hair of her cunt, between the terror of being spotted by strangers (or worse, friends) and the aching desire to touch him as he licks her clean and soothes her sore cunt with tender kisses. Lust wins out over caution, finally, and with one last frantic glance around she tugs her skirt up into her lap, baring the entirety of her lower body to the cool night air.

Marcus looks up at her with great amusement. “What happened to being afraid we’d get caught?”

“If you’re under there,” she points out sensibly, “I can’t do _this.”_ Then she clutches his hair in both hands, leans back against the cold stone wall, and guides his head exactly to where she wants it.

He obeys happily, nuzzling gently between her folds, letting his beard tease and torture her, a thousand tiny pinpricks of sensation roughing against every nerve ending, an entirely new feeling she’s never experienced before but now she can’t imagine how she ever lived without it. Her fingers loosen in his hair, no longer needing to direct him, since he seems perfectly able to find his way around on his own, and simply savoring the luxurious feel of it between her fingers. Marcus seems as affected by her soft, almost chaste caresses of his hair as she is by the feeling of his tongue circling her clit, and something about that devastates her a little, that touch means as much to him as fucking, that he's so hungry for this part of it too, and she suddenly feels ashamed of herself for never seeing it, how _lonely_ he was after Callie died, all those years and years, always the third when she and Jake were two. Always the best man, watching his friends pair off one by one, then going back to his apartment alone. And yet, never a complaint or a hint of jealousy or a single indication that he wasn't perfectly fine, until he'd asked her last night - without being brave enough to ask directly - if she thought he'd be this lonely for the rest of his life. 

“I love you so much,” she whispers, heart aching with desperate affection, overcome with gratitude and desire and guilt and grief. “I love you, I love you, I love you.”

He doesn’t lift his head, just drives deeper and deeper into her, lips and tongue sweeping across her soft flesh, but she can feel him mouthing the words against her cunt.

_I love you. I love you. I love you._

When he seals his lips around the quivering flesh of her entrance and begins to drink, pulling the wetness - both his and hers - out of her and into his mouth, her hips almost rocket off the bench. She’s never felt anything like it. He sucks and licks and hums contented little moans into her flesh as though he can’t get enough of the way she tastes, and when she comes it seems only to spur him on.

“Fuck, Marcus,” she whispers, as he bathes her now-sensitive clit with kisses, “I don’t know if I can . . . it’s too much, I’m so -” But her voice trails off as he licks a slow, broad stripe down the seam of her folds to plunge his tongue fiercely into her cunt, startling a shocked cry of pleasure out of her and pushing her right back to the brink.

He stays on his knees, head buried in her lap, hands gripping her bare thighs, until she’s come three times and she’s so sensitive she has to pull him away; she gets the feeling he’d stay there the rest of the night, if she let him. But he doesn’t forget his original promise, and when he rises back to his feet, her cunt has been entirely licked clean.

_“Now_ can we go upstairs?” he asks playfully, offering her a chivalrous arm, and even though she's come so many times her body can't take another one just yet, she can't stop herself from shivering at the thought that his naked body will be pressed against hers all night long, and this time it will be hers to do anything she wants.

"Absolutely," she says, taking a deep breath and steeling herself, as she follows him out of the shadows and into the light. "We just have to run the gauntlet first."

Through the veranda’s glass doors, they can see the party is still well underway. “What I wouldn’t give for someone to pull the fucking fire alarm,” Abby mutters, as Marcus opens the door and they’re immediately deafened by “My Girl" blasting through the no-longer-blissfully-muffled speakers. “We need a distraction so we can sneak away.”  
  
And then - as though the universe itself decides to take pity on them - the clock strikes midnight, they hear the DJ shouting incomprehensibly about something, and suddenly there's a stampede, six hundred drunk partygoers staggering gleefully in the exact opposite direction.

"Thank fucking God," Marcus exclaims fervently. "The _fireworks."_

Sure enough, the crowd is moving en masse, with remarkable swiftness, toward the veranda doors on the other side of the ballroom, and pouring outside onto the hotel’s vast, sweeping front lawn, leaving no one behind but a small cadre of exhausted-looking waiters. “Quick,” he says, seizing Abby’s hand, and they race through the room, stopping only to grab her purse from the table, as the rest of the wedding guests swarm the gardens, emptying the room completely just in time for the first explosion, followed by a predictable cascade of “oohs” and “aahs.”

They duck out the ballroom’s side door into the hotel foyer entirely unnoticed and they’re safely ensconced in the elevator in under three minutes. “That was close,” says Marcus, exhaling in relief and leaning back against the wall as the elevator door closes. "I can't believe it actually worked."  
  
"Well, we'll find out when we see Charmaine tomorrow whether it worked or not."

"We're safe, I saw her go outside with Charles when the fireworks started. Thelonious spotted them smoking indoors and they made a run for it."

"She'll know. She'll be able to tell just from looking at us. You know she will."  
  
"Still," says Marcus brightly, as the elevator door opens and they step out into the hallway, "you didn't get stuck in a conversation with Alie's pastor with cum running down your thighs, so overall, a fairly providential escape."  
  
"That's true."  
  
"I'm only sorry about the fireworks, by the way," he adds, as she slides her key card into the lock. "I know how much you love them. And these were going to be good ones. Or expensive, anyway. I'm sorry you had to miss the fireworks."  
  
Abby looks up at him, smiling. “Believe me,” she says, taking his hand. “I didn’t.” Then she leans up on her toes to kiss his mouth as the hotel room door closes behind them.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Loving Abby](https://archiveofourown.org/works/19405804) by [Melanie_b](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Melanie_b/pseuds/Melanie_b)




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